It had to happen. With the current craze of building musicals around the songs of a well known group-Abba and Queen being the two best known examples-it wasn’t long before someone came up with the idea of a show incorporating songs of Boney M. Called Daddy Cool, after the group’s first big hit, the show is about a young Londoner called Sunny (another bit hit for them) who falls in love with the daughter of a notorious club owner. Boney M, an all black group, was huge in India and parts of Europe, including Germany and provided Polydor, then the emerging rival to the established EMI label, with their biggest success in this country. The group had several dance hits, including “Rasputin”, “Rivers of Babylon”, and “Brown Girl in the Ring” and drew large crowds when they visited India in the mid-80s.

Isn’t she lovely

In these competitive times, it is not a small feat for a magazine to survive three years - especially if it is a niche product. Well one magazine has. It is a glossy 25 page all-coloured magazine dedicated in the best traditions of Congress sycophancy to just one topic— Priyanka Gandhi. From what she eats to how great a soul she is, all aspects are reverentially covered. It has many sponsors including, for some odd reason, Goa tourism which has given a full page all-colour advertisement.

Among old friends

Jean Charest, Premier of Quebec, the Francophone province of Canada, is on his first visit to India but is not without good contacts here. Over the last couple of days in Delhi and Kolkata, he has been meeting his old friend Kamal Nath. Both Nath and Charest were ministers of environment of their respective countries during the Rio summit and have kept in touch since then. Nath hosted Charest and his wife Michelle for a private dinner in Delhi. But Quebec has another interesting India connection too. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s daughter went to McGill University in Montreal.

Bongs galore

After Amitav Ghosh announced the nominations for a best writer award in a city bookstore, a lady who introduced herself as a debut novelist, politely asked the celebrated writer why there was such a proliferation of Bengali writers in English. Ghosh remarked, in a charming tone, that nothing short of a minor genocide could stop this because as long as there is literature, the Bengalis would continue write. Later it was known that the lady in question was one herself.